Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

1912

New Mexico became the 47th state.

1919

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.

1945

George H.W. Bush married Barbara Pierce in Rye, N.Y.

1993

Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie died at age 75.

1994

Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right leg in an assault planned by the ex-husband of her rival, Tonya Harding.

2001

With the vanquished Vice President Al Gore presiding, Congress certified Republican George W. Bush the winner of the close and bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.

2005

Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.)